Archives For Open Source

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is John Mertic and I have been newly minted as the Community Manager (or as known in community management circles, Chief Cat Herder). I come to this from the more technical side of the house, with deep engineering experience in SugarCRM, especially for using it as a platform for building applications for your organization (and written twobooks on the subject). For me personally it’s a very exciting opportunity, as I have a passion for helping people solve their problem and interacting with various communities, making it a great fit for both myself and Sugar.

So now that I’m officially on the “products” side of the house (with deep hooks into both my former peeps in engineering as well as our excellent marketing team ) and somewhat new to the SugarCRM community as a whole, I feel my first task is to define the community. Those of you who have been around awhile will be well-aware of our rather “indifferent” stance towards community (and many will argue I’m being too kind there). For me being more of a community guy, and especially as one who is tasked with managing it, it makes perfect sense to define what this encompasses and what it means to be a part of the Sugar community.

With that last statement I’ve actually split this into two tasks; the first is to define what encompasses the community. Is it just those people using the open source edition of Sugar? Maybe those building or developing on Sugar? Or could it be the folks with projects and add-ons at SugarForge or SugarExchange? I would say yes to all of them, but I’d make the pool much bigger, including these folks as well:

People who use SugarCRM as an end-user in their daily life

The vast network of partners, consultants, system integrators, and brother’s-nephew’s-cousin-who-knows-how-t0-use-computers who have (or tried to) install and administer Sugar.

All those cloud and other shared hosting providers who offer the option to install SugarCRM easily on their hosting platform.

That lonely developer who has been tasked building an app for his organization to use internally, and is looking for a great platform to build upon.

The sales person (or person in charge of sales people) who is fed up with his or her current CRM selection (or lack thereof ) and wants something different.

In a nutshell, it’s pretty much anyone who’s ever dealt with us or heard of us before. Sounds like a lot of cats to herd…

So what does it mean to be part of this vast group of people? Looking for common ground, I find there’s one thing that binds us together: the need to solve a problem. Whether that problem is just having a virtualized Rolodex, automating business processes, or integrating third-party tools together, we just are looking for ways to make life easier without boundaries. What are those boundaries? Think proprietary and locked-down applications with limited customization options. Think data that is not free to push and pull out of the system. Think lack of freedom where to deploy your application. All of these are boundaries that do little to help you, and serve more as a giant pain in an unspecified but widely-known body part.

When I look at the Sugar community, I see a vast group of pragmatic do-ers, wanting to make their lives and the lives of everyone around them easier. And that’s who I am here to serve.

In the words of Jerry Maguire, “Help me, help you.”

John

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Today at JasperWorld in San Francisco, SugarCRM and Jaspersoft are announcing an enhanced alliance that will help bring even greater business intelligence (BI) solutions to our customers around the world.

From a technology perspective, this makes a lot of sense. CRM data is some of the most critical information in any enterprise. Adding the ability to perform even deeper analysis of CRM data, and to couple that data with other business data – is a no-brainer in terms of the insight and predictability it can give a business.

But I think it is important to note how well SugarCRM and Jaspersoft are aligned in terms of how we see the business technology world evolving. I had the chance to listen to Jaspersoft CEP Brian Gentile this morning as he kicked off the JasperWorld 2011 conference. Brian outlined four basic tenets of how technology solutions at the top of the stack are evolving. He noted that modern business tools need to have the following attributes (I am paraphrasing here):

Ubiquitous Access

A Pleasing, Simple User Experience

Powerful Customization

User-Generated Collaboration

When I heard this, all of the work we put in to enhancing our partnership made even more sense. While SugarCRM is focusing on the sales, marketing, support etc. side of business users and Jaspersoft focuses on the more generic data analysis side of things – we could not be in deeper agreement or more aligned in our vision.

First off, when it comes to ubiquitous access – Sugar is all over that. With the iPhone app and upcoming tools for other mobile platforms, it is now easier to access CRM data and analysis anytime, anywhere.

I think the amazing work the Sugar engineering team put into making Sugar 6 the most intuitive and modern user interface on the market speaks volumes about the importance we place on user experience.

Also, when it comes to powerful yet simple customization and personalization – no other CRM tool comes close to matching Sugar. From powerful yet simple UI changes, to building custom purpose-built applications with Module Builder and Sugar logic – there is no better platform for application customization than Sugar.

Finally, user-generated collaboration can mean a lot of things. Sugar has worked hard to foster a collaborative environment for our users. Between the Sugar feeds, integrations with web 2.0 tools like Box.net Twitter and LinkedIn, and our new IBM Lotus Live integration that powers online meetings and real-time document sharing, Sugar users can collaborate internally and externally in ways no other CRM can accommodate.

It is great to see that there are technology providers out there that really “get it” when it comes to the knowledge worker of tomorrow. For a generation that grew up online, the tools they use at work need to be powerful yet intuitive, connected and collaborative. We are proud to be able to offer not only that ability in Sugar but also in combined solutions with some great partners.

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Note – for co-founder Clint Oram’s take on our awesome year in 2010 – read below this post.

One of the great things about being with a company for more than half of its existence – you get to experience the growth in such a profound way. When I first came to SugarCRM, we were an upstart company with a vision – and making bets that people wanted to make the open choice for their CRM and their IT future in general.

Man, has it paid off. We closed 2010 with another record year in terms of billings, and the company has proven that a business model dedicated to providing open, flexible solutions can be a winner – as the company turned cash flow positive in the year.

Below are the details of the great year – grabbed from a press announcement we released today. I am happiest about the amazing customer momentum – the 50%+ billings growth is just icing on the cake. Really, our amazing community of developers, customers and partners makes this success happen every day – we couldn’t do it without you – THANK YOU.

The company increased total billings 56 percent in the quarter versus the year ago quarter, and saw a 13 percent growth in total billings versus the third quarter of 2010. For the fiscal year, billings increased 52 percent compared to fiscal 2009. In addition, the company turned cash flow positive in 2010, capping off a milestone year of growth in all areas.

“Simply put, 2010 was an amazing year for SugarCRM and its partners,” said Larry Augustin, chief executive officer of SugarCRM. “Our record growth is clear proof that organizations of all shapes and sizes are tired of proprietary, restrictive CRM solutions and are now demanding flexible, intuitive and open solutions delivered via a trusted source.”

Partner Momentum Fuels Growth

SugarCRM’s record growth is due in large part to its expansive channel sales network. In 2010, SugarCRM added more than 100 new channel and consulting partners, including leading firms like AmziQSource, Bezier, BTM Solutions, Capgemini, CRM International, CRMADDON Factory, OpusVL, and Walpole.

In addition, SugarCRM Gold Partner Levementum delivered more than $1 million in annual billings to SugarCRM in 2010. “Our success with Sugar is a true partnership. Working together globally, SugarCRM and Levementum provide powerful, flexible, open solutions for our customers,” said Doug Guilbeau, managing director at Levementum. “Levementum and SugarCRM are dedicated to helping customers successfully implement both traditional and inventive approaches to relationship management.”

“We chose SugarCRM because it is a great tool to allow our company to collaborate and share information worldwide,” said Bev Brisebois, SugarCRM administrator at GEEP Global. “From an IT perspective, SugarCRM is not only easy to manage but also easy to customize. Sugar provides numerous resources for assisting and training users and provides convenience by offering a mobile version for those travelling employees. Sugar 6 is a simple and seamless transition from any CRM.”

Sugar 6 Makes CRM Simple

The company’s record 2010 was highlighted by the release of Sugar 6, a milestone release for SugarCRM. Sugar 6 is winning rave reviews from customers and technology observers for its industry-leading user experience, social CRM capabilities and user-friendly customization and personalization tools.

In addition, SugarCRM also expanded its leadership position in mobile CRM with the release of Sugar Mobile for iPhone. The first of a series of native applications for mobile devices, Sugar Mobile raises the bar for user experience, ease of use and robust features in a mobile CRM offering.

I have always told prospects that it pays to deploy and open, flexible CRM solution…

Now, for businesses in Singapore it really PAYS!

The country has a long history of fostering the creation of well-run small businesses. The latest installment of Singapore’s benevolent attitude towards growing local businesses: SugarCRM is now listed as a certified solution under iSPRINT (Packaged Solutions).

So – what does this mean?

Simply put – any Singapore business that deploys SugarCRM is eligible for a credit of up to 50 percent of the qualifying costs, capped at S$10,000 of an initial subscription of a listed solution. So, that means deploying a best-in-class CRM system at half the cost. That is, seriously, pretty darn cool.

Imagine adding the ability to better manage your contacts, opportunities, activities etc. across your sales, marketing and support teams. Imagine having access to a full reporting suite to guide your business and gain predictability. Imagine empowering sales and support agents with their critical data on the go with mobile CRM access. Imagine identifying, converting and delighting more customers with social CRM tools.

The deal pits Salesforce.com in many ways against some big companies and very popular products – Citrix’s GoToMeeting and Cisco’s Webex, in addition to IBM’s Lotus Live set of offerings. With its recent platform buy in Heroku, and this new move, it is funny to see Salesforce continue to add competitive concerns and look to enter in large markets where it has no clout, rather than look to live above the competition in one market where it already does well. Confident move? Yes. Smart move? Well, we’ll just have to wait…

And while the DimDim acquisition clearly places SFDC in competition with the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting, Salesforce would like to look at this differently. Salesforce instead sees this as a pocket acquisition to bolster its Chatter functionality – a tool it is already basically just giving away to gain some stickiness for its actual paid apps. So, if SFDC does not really see much future for DimDim save for part of what is now a free add-on, then the $31m price was not a huge price to pay to make a cool new collaboration feature a little more robust.

But again, if Chatter is basically free at this point, why buy DimDim? The product was open source under the GPL. Couldn’t SFDC simply create an integration to the free tool and offer up that integration along with a simple installer to add video and screen sharing tools to Chatter?

I think the answer here is two-fold. One, I have not yet seen SFDC do anything that resembles open source. Yes, they have opened up their toolkits and platforms for developers, but everyone does that. There is just not that type of culture alive at SFDC in my opinion. This is a company steeped in the grand history of proprietary software.

The second reason (which is definitely intertwined with the first) is that due to SFDC’s multi-tenant model, adding DimDim-like resources without wholly owning the code would be problematic. As we know, in order for SFDC to really have a tight handle on anything its users touch, it has to run on its monolithic platform. This makes upgrades and other things easy, but does set limitations on how SFDC can go to market with technology it doesn’t own.

It will be interesting to see if the nature of a GPL licensed piece of software sitting inside a huge multi-tenant database has any effect on the way in which Chatter users are empowered to make, own and redistribute changes.

All in all, this is chump change for SFDC, and while it plots them theoretically against big names like Webex, I can’t see Salesforce actually making any huge headway into standalone video conferencing with the DimDim technology – most likely Salesforce.com will only relegate the functionality as a nice add-on to Chatter.

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Two of the biggest trends in CRM over the past couple of years have been mobile access and the addition of social media channels. While these technology trends were developing, more and more small and midsize companies around the world were discovering that thanks to open source and the cloud – they could now afford to add the benefits of CRM to their businesses.

Now, all of these technology and business trends are converging in the latest release of Sugar 6. The latest and greatest from the people that pioneered “CRM Made Simple” are at it again, this time adding Global, Mobile and Social capabilities to Sugar 6.

On the global front, 13 new language packs make it easier than ever for companies around the world to get up and running quickly with a best in class CRM system. Sugar will continue to add these fully supported language and currency translations – which no longer require downloading and installing or updating. Just select your language and currency from the drop down list at startup – and you’re good to go!

More and more workers are looking to gain access to data and do their jobs more effectively while away from the office. SugarCRM has answered this call with a new Sugar Mobile application for the iPhone. This native application captures the sleek look and feel of iPhone resident applications, and is fully integrated with the iPhone features. This means you can click to call, and log that call in Sugar in seconds. Click on an address to jump to the google map of that location. With Sugar Mobile – all of your data and connections are just a click away at all times.

Social media is a hot topic, and adding social channels to your CRM system can give you an edge in the market. With the latest edition of Sugar 6, you can quickly check the Twitter streams of contacts and accounts with the new Twitter Connector. And a new integration with social collaboration vendor Qontext makes it easier to collaborate in real time with co-workers and customers in a cool new social media friendly manner.

So there you have it – new Global, Mobile and Social tools – right inside the most intuitive, flexible and open CRM system on the planet.

Check out these new features for yourself by grabbing your own Free Trial of Sugar 6 today.